The market offers a number of snack foods with varying degrees of nutritional value. Fried pasta snack foods are desireable over other types of snack foods because pasta is based on wheat. Wheat, of course, is a complex carbohydrate that satisfies hunger without providing high levels of sugar and fats.
The problem with conventional fried pasta snack foods is one of texture and crunch. Conventional pasta extrusion processes produce a dense, coherent flour and water product that, when fried, either overexpands to form an airy product lacking a satisfying substantiality. Overly light products do not provide a sufficient bulk to satisfy the hunger causing snacking. On the other hand, an underexpanded fried pasta forms a heavy mass with a hard, unpleasant crunch which deters casual consumption by all but the most determined. Either an unsatisfying bulk or unpleasant crunch force will cause consumers to turn away from relatively healthy pasta to more easily consumed, but less healthy, snack foods.
It would be desireable to have a manufacturing process for making a fried, extruded pasta product that would expand and from a moderately light, easily chewed product with a satisfying bulk.